There are many things people not used to life in wartime might find surprising in Kharkiv, some bad but a lot good. One of the latter is Kharkiv Zoo, which is open; free, in fact, as a boost to civic morale. It’s also very, very quiet, which is surreal on a warm, bright Sunday morning in spring. I was able to walk right up to the glass/fence, sometimes alone.
Googling ‘zoo Ukraine’ produces various mostly sad but occasionally funny stories from the war: animals euthanised, moved abroad or… lured back home on bicycles. You might expect the remaining creatures would have their nerves jangled.
They showed no signs of that. In fact they were virtually somnolent for the most part. So I took some amateur snaps and consulted animal expert and greatly appreciated reader Silvia Gasparini as to what I was missing.
Silvia: I can see a number of problems, but not, imo, directly caused by war. Rather, they are problems common to most zoos, with a few exceptions… All the enclosures, while architectonically pleasing, are much too small for species which move around for tens of kilometers every day. Of course, I understand that an ethologically correct zoo would leave little for visitors to see, unless they were willing to walk kilometers too.
The carnivores have at the very least varied terrain and a well-built playpen. The tiger is sunbathing in complete happy relaxation. I have some slight doubts about the leopard, who seems a bit too energetic in his walk (bored...), but there is no sign of loss of hair due to overgrooming, and the pelicans look quite fine chatting together, so on the whole I'd say the carnivores/piscivores get by tolerably well.
I like the herbivore enclosures much less … The giraffe and the elephant, poor guys. What is there for them to do all day long? The giraffe [no photograph here, due to extremely reflective glass] seems to have additional problems. Is there an outside area for her/him? Is the flooring concrete or rubber? Is there some moderately soft area to lie down? Always standing and walking on concrete brings nasty problems with feet and legs, and of course bedsores.
The worst seems to be the one (just one?) hippo, dejectedly flattened on the ground. Hippos are social animals! If you can't manage a few hippos as a group, which I understand is not an easy endeavour, don't keep any!
I wonder whether it would not be worth a try to experiment in putting the hippo and giraffe and elephant (though Indian and not African) in the same pen, of course with careful supervision because of hippo territoriality. It would mean keeping division gates for a while, to see what happens, like when two cats are introduced to each other. If it worked, at least the three (or two) of them would have some company.
I see more zoo boredom than war fear. I am reminded of what a Thoroughbred horse breeder paradoxically said about bombardments in WW2: the horses either get used to the noise, or are hit and die/are euthanised. No problem in either case.
I am rather relieved that so far, and unless the zoo gets directly hit, those animals are not suffering from war as much as humans sadly are doing.
OK, I was expecting something worse than that. No scoop here, guys; but I think the calm of the zoo is interesting in itself.
It is, after all, a special Kharkiv calm. After about 15 minutes of wandering in the strange airy quiet there was an explosion in the distance to remind me of context. And a recorded announcement in the Ukrainian version of a plummy British accent: ‘Dear visitors: there is an air alert. We recommend that you leave the premises of the zoo and take shelter in the University Metro Station.’ Needless to say, nobody did this. Another explosion resounded about 20 minutes later from the same direction; the Russians routinely killing the rescue workers who attended the site the first time around. The hippo’s numb exhaustion is Kharkiv’s dominant mood.
War does strange things. Here I am, promoted on the field (for unclear merits) to "animal expert"... =)
Anna sent me a number of carefully taken photos and videos, and I tried to silence my human mind and look with animal eyes. The question (just one of the basic questions) with zoos is that each species is usually kept separate, while nature is a mix-and-match of species. This breeds problems, because the management of the spaces is not optimal, and behavioural requisites cannot be met. But others have said as much with more detail and more competence I could ever muster. Thank you Anna for involving me in what very little I can try and do from afar! And good luck to the Kharkiv zoo residents!